In the field of communications, to perform mobility management on a user equipment (UE), a radio link needs to be measured, so as to evaluate, according to a measurement result, quality of a signal received from a cell by the UE. At present, reference signaling for measurement mainly includes a cell-specific reference signal (CRS) and a channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS).
In an existing measurement manner, a network side delivers measurement control information to a UE to regulate a measurement behavior and a measurement reporting criterion of a user; the UE measures a neighboring cell of an access cell, and reports, to the network side, a measurement result conforming to the reporting criterion in a form of a measurement report, where the measurement report includes an identity of a cell conforming to the reporting criterion. The network side performs mobility management (for example, a handover decision) on the UE according to the measurement result reported by the UE. In an existing measurement manner, reference signaling (a CRS or a CSI-RS) highly corresponds to a measurement type, and the network side does not constrain the measurement behavior of the UE excessively. However, with the development of communications technologies, after a non-backward-compatible cell or carrier such as a new carrier type (NCT) cell or carrier is introduced, the existing measurement manner is no longer applicable.